Pagan Metaphysics is written by Paul Reid-Bowen, a lecturer in Religions, Philosophies and Ethics at Bath Spa University (UK). His research and teaching interests encompass metaphysics, existentialism, ecological and feminist philosophy, and a number of new religious movements (notably pagan, nature and feminist religions).

Sunday, 25 January 2015

There is an interesting post by George Mobus here, one which closely parallels the best case scenario to be outlined in my current book project. I do worry that something like Dilworth's vicious circle principle would repeatedly and tragically re-engage itself in human affairs after a global collapse, even following many cycles of societal collapse in the mid to long-term human future; thus leading to recurrent periods of human ecological overshoot. However, given that such cycles would take place in a world that Clugston characterises as one of "continuously less and less", plus one where the climatological catastrophe of the anthropocene would be unfolding with considerable and painful vigor, it is at least possible that humanity - or at least the genus Homo, as Mobus puts it - would eventually be ground down to a point far closer to dynamic equilibrium than it is now. I'm certainly not optimistic, neither is Mobus, but it is conceivable that something recognizably human might transition out of the current fifty thousand year period of cultural experimentation and ecocidal expansion. Of course, whether it ought to is an entirely different matter.

How to Save the Human Genus

What Can be Saved?

I am on record as saying I doubted that humanity as a global population
could be saved from certain destruction. I have also stated that the
species, Homo sapiens is probably not salvageable in its current form. However, I have also suggested that the salvation of the genus, Homo is both feasible and desirable. Let me briefly recount.

There is at this point, in my opinion, nothing that can be done to save
the vast majority of humans alive today from a catastrophic demise. I am
sorry. And below I will summarize my findings. The simple truth, as I
see it, is that humanity has set itself on an irreversible course of
destruction that is equivalent to the impact on the Ecos that the meteor
or comet that crashed into the Yucatan peninsula had on the dinosaurian
Ecos 65 million years ago. That is, by our activities we have brought
about a geologically recognizable age called the Anthropocene in which
we are the agents of the extinction of vast numbers of species,
including, possibly, our own. Whenever such die-off events have happened
in the past the Ecos shifted its characteristics and dynamics such that
the extant species either went extinct or gave rise to new species of
the same genus that were better adapted to the new Ecos. I fully expect
the same kind of thing to happen in the future.

In any case the populations of critters and plants were decimated or
severely reduced in number and that is what I suspect will happen to our
populations. Homo sapiens must, of necessity, go extinct
simply because the future environment will be extraordinarily hostile to
human life. The real question is whether the genus might give rise to a
new species that is better fit for the new Ecos before the very last
member of the tribe extinguishes.[CONTINUES HERE]